Music

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

People always say it, and I often do myself: “Seeing (Movie X) on the big screen again was like seeing it for the first time!” This was
emphatically not true for me last night when I took my daughter to see 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Arclight
Cinemas in Hollywood. (It was her
first experience with the movie in a theater, however—more on that in a bit.)

I first saw 2001 about a year after it was released—this was the amount of time
it usually took big new releases to make it out to our patch of sticks in the
small Oregon where I grew up. That would put me at about the ripe ol’ age of
nine years old when I took my first trip with Stanley Kubrick to Jupiter and
Beyond the Infinite. The presentation was what it always was at the Alger
Theater when I was a kid—images were projected on a screen, sound came from
speakers behind the screen, and I was damn grateful for that. I had no idea of
the point in technological breakthrough—70mm, Cinerama, stereo sound— where
2001 resided when it was shown elsewhere, and in 1969 I didn’t much care. I had
read Arthur C. Clarke’s book and immersed myself in anything I could get my
hands on about it in anticipation of actually seeing it for myself, but of
course no amount of prep could have done the job. Regardless of how
state-of-the-art the theater in which moviegoers saw it in 1968 might or might
not have been, one thing was certainly true— this movie bore no resemblance to
the bland musicals, stodgy adult dramas and bloated spectacles which had
clogged American movie screens over the previous decade.For my own part, I can’t
say I knew exactly what I’d seen when I emerged from the dark onto the main
street of my hometown (though at the time I probably thought I did). But I knew I loved it, and everything— movies, the
world, everything— looked different afterward. Since that night in 1969 I’ve
seen the movie many times in theaters much nicer than the Alger, including the
Cinerama Dome, as well as in just about every adequate and inadequate format
available on home video—laserdisc, Betamax, VHS, and commercial-riddled network
TV.

But seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey last night, in the “unrestored” 70mm print
now circulating in cities around the US, a print which duplicates from the
original negative the way the film was seen and heard in the best theaters upon
its premiere, with no 2018-style enhancements, was a genuine
eye-and-ear-opening experience. It seemed nothing like the way I saw it the
first time, and in some really pronounced ways it felt as if I was seeing this movie, so familiar from
countless exposures to it over the ensuing 49 years, for the first time.

And it was a thrill to take my daughter along for the ride. I
spent some time beforehand trying to contextualize the state of American movies
for her, and what audiences might have been inclined to expect before they sat
in their seats and proceeded to make Kubrick’s cerebral consideration of the
origins and evolution of civilization one of, if not the most unlikely hit in cinema history. (It was the #1 movie in
terms of American box-office receipts among all releases in 1968, and of course
it was re-released seemingly endlessly throughout the ‘70s, marketed to a user-friendly
generation as “The Ultimate Trip.”) So I tried to put that thought into my
daughter’s head: pretend that you
haven’t spent your entire life watching movies and TV shows and anime episodes
which wouldn’t exist, at least in their current form, without the direct
influence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and instead try to see it not only the way
you will see it, but also with a nod toward the way those people who had no
idea what was coming once did.

Mission accomplished. In the dazed walk back to our car
afterward, together we parsed out our theories of what 2001 was up to—the dawn
of man, of consciousness, of utility; the appearance (and re-appearance) of
some mysterious and influential semblance of the spiritual, and its influence
on yet another iteration of human evolution as it assimilates into, expands and
directs the function of human-generated artificial intelligence; and the
emergence of some altogether new life-form, perhaps the first visitation of
humanoid extra-terrestrial life, and the eruption of changes which it will
inevitably set in motion. None of this seemed terribly perplexing to a young
woman who, like many of the more thoughtful members of her generation, has been
weaned on oblique genre-blasting, narrative-shattering approaches to
storytelling. She welcomed the movie’s deliberately mysterious tenor, its
disorienting spatial perspectives, and the grandeur of old-world civilization
(Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss II, Aram Khachaturian) imposed on decidedly new
world technology which had been employed to seek out and discover equally old,
yet strange and unfamiliar worlds. And we had a great time talking about all
the newfangled techno-concepts which seemed far-out in 1968 (space stations,
picture phones, electronically enhanced food preparation, to name but a few),
but which are now, 17 years past the actual year 2001, part of our everyday
reality.

What surprised me most seeing it last night was the degree to
which the 70mm presentation of 2001: A Space Odyssey enhanced the movie’s
reputation as an overwhelming sensory experience. I have always had an admiration
for the way the movie adheres to its matter-of-fact tone re space travel—zero
gravity, the absence of sound, and even the tedium of traveling hundreds of
thousands of miles through a star-spangled vacuum. All of these elements give
2001 a specific quality of detachment, the rendering of a giant leap for
mankind as something on the order of the routine, which, given Stanley
Kubrick’s overall aesthetic, would hardly be unexpected. But the journey of
astronaut Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) from Jupiter to Beyond the Infinite, in
perhaps the movie’s most famously disorienting (“trippy,” if you must)
sequence, enhanced by blinding rushes of light and ear-shattering atonal chorales supplied by composerGyörgy Ligeti, is genuinely frightening and
overwhelming, especially in this 70mm incarnation. My desensitized eardrums had
no trouble with the overload—in fact, they welcomed it. But my dear daughter
and her much healthier auditory system, despite earlier exposure to the movie’s
intense use of amplified sound—for screeching extraterrestrial radio
transmissions as well as the thunderous performances of “Also Sprach
Zarathustra” and “The Blue Danube Waltz”—was not, could not­ have been prepared for what the movie was, in this
sequence, about to immerse her in. As a result, she came out the other side of
it almost as rattled (though not as aged) as poor, haunted Bowman, himself put
through a lifetime of aging in mere minutes.

To those who have encountered 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70mm
before (and if you live in a metropolitan area you may have had many opportunities
over the past 50 years since its initial release), all this “Ultimate Trip”-style
talk might sound like old news. But even if you have seen it in 70mm before,
chances are that the print you saw may have displayed some slight or even more significant
wear-and-tear. Not so the newly minted print, which under the aegis of director
Christopher Nolan (Inception, Dunkirk)
premiered at the Cannes Film Festival a couple of weeks ago. This is what Kubrick’s
movie looked like on Opening Day 1968 in the biggest, spiffiest venues
possible, light-years ahead of the little rundown movie house in Southeastern Oregon
where I first saw it. For folks like me, who to this point, no matter how times
we may have seen it, still really haven’t seen or heard it at its most
spectacular, 2001: A Space Odyssey in this new 70mm print retains the power to
make a viewer look at this world, and those beyond, with eyes that feel new, shaking,
challenging, altering sensibilities in a way with which no other movie has since
been able to compare, even the ones Kubrick himself created within the long
shadow of his pioneering monolith. The movie continues in Los Angeles and other
cities for at least another week, through May 31 and perhaps beyond, though not
into the Infinite. Make this ultimate trip while you can, before both time and space run out.

Friday, May 18, 2018

Monday, May 07, 2018

Yet another TCM Classic Film Festival is in the bank—the
ninth out of nine I’ve been privileged to attend. For those who have a mind to,
my extended coverage of the festival—not a blow-by-blow of everything I did,
but a look at some of the highlights—is available at Slant magazine’s blog The House Next Door, the venue that
has sponsored my TCMFF attendance for all of those nine years. As I have said
many times, my classic movie education would be considerably less rich without
the supportof my editor at Slant, Ed Gonzalez, and I would be
remiss if he ever had a moment in which the truth of this statement was not
perfectly clear in his mind. And as if by way of proving my gain, every year,
in addition to the Slant piece, I
like to look back on the things I now know that I didn’t know a week ago last
Thursday. So, without any further delay, please feel free to peruse ten things
I learned while attending TCMFF 2018.

RUTHIE TOMPSON IS
ONE OF THE UNSUNG HEROES OF AMERICAN MOVIESRuthie Tompson was born in 1910 and, as a young girl, used to hang around
outside the Disney Bros. studio on Kingswell Avenue in Los Angeles, where Roy
Disney filmed her and some friends, footage she suspects was used for modeling
the animation of the studio’s early Alice comedies. When she was 18, Walt
Disney offered her a job in the ink-and-paint department where she helped
complete the first full-length animated feature in movie history, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It wasn’t long before she was promoted to
final checker, a job which gave her the responsibility of reviewing animated
cels before they were photographed on film, and then on to animation checking
and scene planning, where her skill with guiding camera movements for animated
films was noted and led in 1952 to Tompson being the first woman ever invited
to join the International Photographers Union, Local 659 of the IATSE. Tompson,
now 108 years old and wheelchair-bound, was but one of many distinguished
guests who graced author Mindy Johnson’s extensive tribute “An Invisible
History: Trailblazing Women in Animation,” which contextualized the mostly
unsung (or at least considerably less-sung) contributions of women throughout
the history of this vital tributary of American and international film. TCMFF
attendees are constantly in the presence of an awe-inspiring collection of
history, but to witness it in the personage of a single person like Ruthie
Tompson is to consider anew everything that she and others, with no agenda
other than their desire to participate, create, express through their art, did
to expand and illuminate their craft for everyone who came after, including
lauded filmmakers like Brenda Chapman (Brave)
and Linda Cook (Spirit: Stallion of the
Cimarron)who were also part of Johnson’s panel.

2) FEW THINGS ARE
NEATER THAN A HOLLYWOOD PROFESSIONAL WITH A STYLISTIC SURPRISE UP HIS SLEEVE In
1948 I doubt anyone would have suspected Clarence Brown, MGM signature director
responsible for the lush and very popular family-friendly dramas National Velvet (1946) and The Yearling (1948), as well as the
early Great Garbo vehicles Anna Christie (1930)
and Anna Karenina (1935) and a career
in silent films dating back to 1920, might have a strong sense of social
conscience in him. But
that’s just what was on display when TCMFF featured Brown’s late-period
feature,Intruder in the Dust (1948)
on Friday morning. The film is a neorealist-influenced adaptation of William
Faulkner's novel from the previous year, about a dominant and unquestioned
white (Southern) social structure and mob psychology in the face of a murder,
apparently perpetrated by a black man, who refuses to give away his dignity
even in the face of his own imminent and unjustified death. Faulkner himself
had to concede that Intruder in the Dust was indeed “a pretty good
movie.” With all due respect, it's considerably more than that and deserves a
much higher profile in film history than it currently occupies. I certainly
think my own first exposure to it here was as profound a revelation as I've
ever had at TCMFF, and much of that has to do with being able to see unexpected
shading in the career of Clarence Brown.

3) THERE IS NO
WALKING OUT ON PRESTON STURGES As the lights began to go down for the TCMFF
screening of Preston Sturges’ manic, deftly sentimental, production
code-defying corkscrew classic The
Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, I turned to my friend and whispered to him that
since I’d seen the movie a million times (perhaps an exaggeration) I was
probably going duck out about ten minutes or so early, all to ensure that I got
a good spot in line for the next attraction, which was scheduled tight against Miracle in the festival’s smallest
venue. But as the movie barreled its way toward its conclusion, trading its
concern over the location of Ignatz Ratzkywatzky for that of the fates of
star-crossed and multiply-blessed lovers Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken) and Trudy
Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton), I stayed right where I was. As the credits began
to roll, my friend turned to me and said, “You couldn’t do it, could you?”
“Nope,” I replied sheepishly, admitting the futility of my original plan.
“There is just no walking out on Preston Sturges,” I added as I waved good-bye
and bolted out toward the next queue. By the way, I got into the next screening
with no problem.

4) THIS YEAR’S PATRON
SAINTS: BRUCE GOLDSTEIN AND JOHN SAYLES Each year it seems like there’s
one person who shows up once, maybe twice, to introduce screenings which end up
being among the richest experiences of the festival—for me, it’s usually
writer-producer-director-historian-preservationists Michael Schlesinger, who
introduced the screening of Will Success
Spoil Rock Hunter?, my first big-screen experience with the Frank Tashlin
comedy. (More on that one in a second). But this year’s TCMFF featured two
personal patron saints who made impressions during four separate screenings.
Bruce Goldstein, director of repertory programming at NYC’s Film Forum, who I
saw last year heading up an informative discussion on subtitling, brought his
effusive and encyclopedic acumen to bear on tracing the history of Roy Del
Ruth’s Blessed Event (1932), as well
as its multitudinous film-and-stage connections to The Front Page and other rapid-fire comedies of the era. He also
made a great case for the geographic veracity of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), to say nothing of its
immense entertainment value, as a foundation for proclaiming it the greatest
New York City movie ever made, a claim none in the packed house at the Egyptian
were prepared to argue with. And writer-director-novelist-humanitarian John
Sayles (Lone Star, Matewan) was on hand
to eloquently introduce and expand upon my two favorite experiences at this
year’s festival, Sam Fuller’s pugnacious and still-relevant Park Row (1952) and a transcendent
screening of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a
Time in the West (1969), on the giant Chinese Theater screen as majestic
and emotionally overwhelming as any movie ever made. Each of the four films
would have stood on their own as wonderful experiences, but the presence of
these two guiding lights brought dimensions to each screening which accentuated
just how illuminating seeing a classic movie can be when sprinkled with just
the right mixture of erudition, wit and sincere movie love.

5) I HAVE A BIT OF A THING FOR
FRANCES DEE Based solely upon the screening of Finishing School (1936), which kicked off this year’s festival for
me, I have a newborn big thing for Frances Dee. A strange thing to contemplate,
I suppose, considering her grandson, Wyatt McCrea, introduced the
screening—Dee’s husband of 57 years, until his death in 1990, was Joel McCrea.
(“Sir, your grandmother was, um, really cute.”) A quick sweep through her
credits reveals that the only other film of Dee’s I’ve ever seen is, no
surprise, I Walked with a Zombie
(1943). So, in response to this revelation, I have self-imposed the sort of homework
assignment an ignorant film geek should live for.

6) ALICIA MALONE AND THE THRONE OF BLOOD-GODZILLA CONNECTION I still haven’t fully acclimated
to Alicia Malone as a TCM host—she’s an appealing presence, and a definite
improvement upon Tiffany Vasquez, who still seems a bit uncomfortable reading
from a teleprompter. But she was an engaging extemporaneous presence in her
enthusiastic comments before Thursday night’s screening of Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957), and she struck
the perfect balance between esoteric appreciation and fangirl glee over Toshiro
Mifune and his director’s brilliant reduction and reimagining of Macbeth. As far as the film goes,
Shakespeare is in Kurosawa’s every move here, even if the Bard’s language is,
by necessity or design, not, and despite a less-than-sparkling print the movie
retains as much eerie, sustained power as it ever had. I also had a bit of a
jolt in recognizing a connection between Kurosawa’s movie (and not just this
one) and his country’s greatest kaiju representative. Of course, Takashi
Shimura, who plays Noriyasu Odagura, Kurosawa’s equivalent of Macduff,
is a veteran not only of Kurosawa’s other classics, Seven Samurai and Ikiru,
but also of the original 1954 version of Godzilla.
But in previous viewings I somehow missed that the actor who plays Yoshiteru
Miki, who occupies Shakespeare’s universe as Fleance, the son of Macbeth’s
betrayed Banquo, is none other than Akira Kubo, veteran of not only Sanjuro (1962) and Chushingura (1962), but much more importantly, Son of Godzilla (1967), Destroy
All Monsters! (1968), and my all-time favorite, Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965). Kurosawa or kaiju, Kubo is
definitely a klassic.

7) THE SQUEALING OF JAYNE
MANSFIELD IS CAPABLE OF SPLITTING THE UNSUSPECTING EARDRUM I’d never seen Will Success Spoil Rock Hudson? on a
big, wide screen before last weekend, yet another first for which I must lay my
thanks at the feet of Michael Schlesinger, who introduced the showing with his
customary smarts. It was loads of fun watching director Frank Tashlin unpack
his visual wit with this satire of American consumerism. But I have to admit I
was unprepared for the devastating effect Jayne Mansfield, would have on my
hearing. As the post-Marilyn Monroe starlet Rita Marlowe, Mansfield wields an
ear-splitting affected squeal of delight that, thanks to the movie’s spiffy
digital restoration, rang through the auditorium like cosmic fingernails on
God’s chalkboard. I love Mansfield in this movie, but I have to admit that as
the movie neared its end I’d come to dread her every appearance because I was
nervous she’d let loose another of those atmosphere-rending audio lightning
bolts. And she did. To appropriate the catch-phrase of an entirely different
horror, in TCMFF Auditorium #6 no one could hear me scream (because I was
holding it in). But at home I can at least turn down the volume.

8) IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE GILL
MAN IN 3D, PERHAPS YOU SHOULDI’ve always loved Jack
Arnold’s Creature from the Black Lagoon
(1954), even though I only saw it projected in 3D (in 16mm) once, back in my
college days. But the 3D DCP on display last weekend at TCMFF was a real
beauty—crisp and clear, it put all the scares back in their proper place,
despite the attempt of some audience members to turn the screening into a
post-Medvedian hootfest. Where the underwater sequences in some movies tend to
bog down the action (I’m looking at you, Thunderball),
the sequences in Arnold’s movie are eerie and to the point, and the 3D really
works to heighten the anticipatory dread over the creature’s inevitable
appearance. Here we’re worlds separated from the murky, smeary effects that
decades later crippled Jaws 3D before
audiences even had a chance to tumble to that movie’s baseline stupidity. In Creature, the Gill Man’s every
underwater move is rendered with absolute clarity, and when his scary, webbed
claw reaches out to the camera from above the surface there can be no doubt the
viewer is witnessing a true stereovision wonder.

9) THERE’S A PERFECT DRINK FOR TCMFF—IT’S THE OLD-FASHIONED, OF
COURSE

Ingredients:Onesugar cube

Two dashes Angostura bitter

Twoounces rye or
bourbon

Orange twist

Preparation: Muddle the sugar cube and bitters with one bar spoon of water at the bottom of achilled rocks glass. Add rye or bourbon. Stir.Add one large ice cube, or three or four smaller cubes. Stir until chilled and properly diluted, about 30 seconds. Slip orange twist on the side of the cube.

Enjoy with friends and immediately proceed to another old-fashioned movie at
TCMFF. Thanks, Bob!

10) THERE’S NOTHING BETTER THAN
WATCHING YOUR DAUGHTER WATCH YOU ON THE BIG SCREEN AT THE CHINESE THEATER After some epic waiting on
their part in the standby line, I managed to get my daughter and my wife into
the closing-night 40th anniversary cast reunion screening of National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978),
which was shot on the campus of the University of Oregon during the fall of
1977. I was lucky enough to wrangle a gig as a long-term extra-- I was among
the pool of Delta pledges called upon daily to fill in the background and
foreground in and around Delta House and the Faber College campus, and I can be
seen bopping around all over the first half of the movie. (My best scene is as
one of the lucky initiates pledging my allegiance to the frat with liberty and
justice for all— my very nervous 17-year-old self is second from the right in
the blue plaid bathrobe.) My daughter had never seen the movie before, so I
thought, what better first exposure could she have that seeing it with a
thousand other fans laughing appreciatively just like it was 1978. And she
loved it, of course. But the most fun she had was playing Spot Daddy, me in my
yellow sweater and blue bathrobe, sharing screen time with the likes of John
Belushi, Tom Hulce and Stephen Furst. It was a priceless thrill for both of us,
and I couldn’t imagine a better way to say good-bye to this year’s festival. To
Animal House and to TCMFF 2018 I can
only say, thanks for the memories.************************************

Friday, May 04, 2018

I’m back. The 2018 TCM Classic Film Festival is in the rearview mirror, and I
have emerged, awash in Visine and sated with the PB&J and deviled ham
sandwiches (not together, of course) I packed for myself to avoid the high cost
of eating at Hollywood & Highland over four days, with a report on some of
what I saw. Here’s a morsel:

“Another writer-director who was himself, like Fuller, at
the forefront of a particularly important moment in the history of American
independent film, John Sayles, used his time introducing Park Row to
eloquently characterize the film, in one of the overall best, most informed,
beautifully delivered speaker presentations I've ever seen at TCMFF, as “Citizen Kane printed on butcher paper.” You could
almost hear Fuller chuckle with approval.

The film then blasted out of the gate before its own opening credits with words meant to evoke the 120-point boldface type of the era's most grave, life-and-death headlines, imposed over a crawl of newspaper banners: “THESE ARE THE NAMES OF 1,772 DAILY NEWSPAPERS IN THE UNITED STATES. ONE OF THE IS THE PAPER YOU READ. ALL OF THEM ARE THE STARS OF THIS STORY.” Then a brief pause while the banners continued to roll, followed in even bigger typeface by a legend which crawled up along with the background to fill the frame:

Fuller, of course, could have had no idea in 1952 the
chill those words would deliver to audiences almost 70 years later, but their
insistence, their implied defiance, along with Fuller's conviction and pulp
power as a director, ensured that Park Row would emerge from a
festival filled with delights and landmarks from the past as perhaps that
festival's most urgent ambassador to the future. On the same Saturday night as
Michelle Wolf's controversial appearance at the White House Correspondents
Dinner, where she was roundly criticized by multiple members of the D.C. press
for speaking truth to power in a manner completely unfamiliar to them, I'm
exceedingly glad that the director's wife, Christa Fuller, was in the TCMFF
auditorium to see for herself just how well the movie was received by modern
eyes and ears, how vital its undercurrent of journalistic vigilance remains.”

You can read the whole piece where it lives, at Slant magazine’s blog The
House Next Door, the excellent online arts collective that has, through the
generosity of editor Ed Gonzalez, sponsored each of my visits to this terrific,
and exhausting, film festival. I’ve been lucky enough to attend all nine TCMFFs
so far, and I can’t wait to see what will be on tap for the 10th anniversary.
Thanks, Ed and Slant for the
significant upgrade in my classic movie education and for the honor of writing
for your magazine.

Sunday, April 22, 2018

So much time, so few movies to see. Scratch that. Reverse
it.Running a little later than usual this year, the 2018 Turner Classic Movies Film
Festival gets under way this coming Thursday, screening approximately 88
films and special programs over the course of the festival’s three-and-a-half
days, beginning Thursday evening, and no doubt about it, this year’s schedule,
no less than any other year, will lay out a banquet for classic film buffs,
casual film fans and harder-core cinephiles looking for the opportunity to see
long-time favorites as well as rare and unusual treats on the big screen. I’ve
attended every festival since its inaugural run back in 2010,and since then if I have
not reined in my enthusiasm for the festival and being given the opportunity to
attend it every year, then I have at least managed to lasso my verbiage. That
first year I wrote about 21,000 words on the experience; last year I turned in
a much more readable 3,000 or so.

And speaking of last year, it’s true that some years at TCMFF have been better
than others, and I was pretty upfront about my misgivings over my dissatisfaction with last year's lineup and the direction the festival seemed to be headed. Last
year’s theme, “Comedy in the Movies,” struck me as a mite too broad and,
indeed, it opened the door for a lot of movies that skirted the boundaries of
exactly what constituted a classic—programming guidelines seemed to be too
heavily weighted on who the
programmers could get to show up, rather than whether the films themselves
would, under any calculus other than one based on age, actually qualify as
“classics.” But in 2018 a casual glance at the schedule of films gathered under the more potentially rich theme of "Powerful Words: The Page Onscreen," promises a more even-handed thoughtful
approach to TCMFF’s programming this year. To illustrate just how good things
look, here’s a list of titles, some that are thematically related, some that
are not, many of them seen in beautiful new restorations, that will be ripe for
the picking under subcategories such as “Discoveries,” “Essentials,”
“Hard-boiled Hollywood,” “Nitrate Films,” “Poet’s Corner,” “Screen to Stage,”
“Shakespeare in the Dark,” “The Power of the Press,” “The Writer’s Block” and
“Christie’s Mysteries (three guesses) when the long lines start moving toward
the doors of the Chinese, Chinese Multiplex, Egyptian and the Cinerama Dome
this weekend:

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1939), The Big Lebowski (1998), The Black Stallion (1979), Bull Durham (1988), Bullitt (1967), The Charge of
the Light Brigade (1936, Detour (1945),
The Exorcist (1973), Fail-Safe (1964), Gigi (1958), Girls About Town
(1931), Grand Prix (in
Cinerama!-- 1966), Hamlet (1948), A Hatful of Rain (1957), Heaven Can Wait (1978), His Girl Friday (1940), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Leave Her to Heaven (1945; one of four
nitrate prints showcased by the festival this year),A Letter to Three Wives (1949), The
Lost Weekend (1945), Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938), The Merry Widow (1934), A
Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935), Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Murder
on the Orient Express (1974), My
Brilliant Career (1979), Night of the
Living Dead (1968), The Odd Couple (1968),
Outrage (1950), The Ox-bow Incident (1943), Places
in the Heart (1984), Point Blank (1967), The Producers (1968), The
Raven (1963), The Right Stuff (1983),
The Roaring Twenties (1939), Romeo and Juliet (1968), Scandal: The Trial of Mary Astor (2018),
The Set-up (1949), The Sea Wolf (1941), Show People (1928), Silk Stockings (1957), Sounder
(1972), Spellbound (nitrate; 1945),
Stage Door (nitrate; 1937), A Star is Born (nitrate; 1937), The Story of GI Joe (1945), Strangers on a Train (1951), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
(1971), The Taking of Pelham One Two
Three (1974), The Ten Commandments (1956),
Them! (1954), This Thing Called Love (1940), Three
Smart Girls (1936), To Have and Have
Not (1944), To Whom It May Concern:
Ka Shen’s Journey (2010), Tunes of
Glory (1960), Where the Boys Are
(1960), Wife vs. Secretary (1936), Windjammer: The Voyage of Christian Radich
(1958), Witness for the Prosecution
(1957), Woman of the Year (1942), The World of Suzie Wong (1960) and The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962).
Whew.

Okay, by any standard that’s a pretty good list, jampacked
with some of the greatest movies ever made, and certainly some of my favorites
(Sunset Boulevard, Them!, The Taking of
Pelham One Two Three, Show People, The Roaring Twenties, The Right Stuff, The
Ox-bow Incident, Night of the Living Dead, Leave Her To Heaven, His Girl
Friday, Bull Durham). And guess what. I’m not going to see any of them.

You heard me. That list would seem to be bounty enough for
any two TCMFF schedules, and I didn’t even include special events like the
hand-and-footprint ceremony in front of the Chinese Theater to honor the
beloved (and Oscar-nominated) Cicely Tyson, and a very tasty-looking panel
discussion entitled “Writing with Light” which will feature several legendary
cinematographers including Stephen H. Burum (Casualties of War, Carlito’s Way), John Toll (The Thin Red Line, Braveheart), Amy Vincent (Hustle & Flow, True Blood), Caleb Deschanel (The Right Stuff, The Black Stallion) and
Robert Richardson (JFK, Inglourious
Basterds). There are some fascinating documentaries on tap this year as
well, all involving the trials, tribulations and singular contributions of
women in Hollywood, including the aforementioned films about Mary Astor and
Nancy Kwan-- both of them late additions to the schedule apparently intended to
complicate my personal TCMFF scheduling even further-- and a once-in-a-lifetime
panel devoted to trailblazing women of animation which will include Academy Award-winning director Brenda Chapman, DreamWorks
Animation studio head Bonnie Arnold, and artists who worked on such classics
as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Sleeping Beauty, Who
Framed Roger Rabbit, Toy Story, Brave
and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.

But I’m not seeing any of it. Why? Because the 2018 TCMFF
schedule is deep-dish enough that I’ve been able to find enough irresistible
choices to optimize this year’s festival for me personally and perhaps (if I
can sufficiently caffeinate myself) make for a memorable four days into which
to cram as many as 18-19 great movies. When cobbling together my TCMFF flight
plan, I typically gravitate toward personal discoveries—movies I’ve never seen
or, in some cases, never even heard of. But this year there are almost as many
that I’ve seen before which warrant a second, or fourth, or eighth visitation,
this time on the big screen. And yes, in a couple of instances I have even been
swayed by the person who has been recruited by TCMFF’s crafty programmers to
introduce the show.

So, here’s what I have in mind. Thursday evening, after I
pick up my festival credentials, I won’t be among the VIPs at the Big Chinese
watching Martin Scorsese receive the first-ever Robert Osborne Award for his
efforts in preserving and protecting motion picture history, followed by Mel
Brooks introducing a restoration of his Oscar-winning The Producers. I will also be passing on that nitrate print of Stage Door, a no-doubt spiffy restoration
of Detour, as well as To Have and Have Not and a poolside
screening of Them! hosted by Dennis
Miller. (Thanks, but I have no desire to see that movie turned into a snarky,
cocktail-fueled party.) Instead, I’ll be making my first it’s-new-to-me discovery
of this year’s festival, a late-period pre-code drama called Finishing School (1934), co-directed by its screenwriter, Wanda Tuchock, the only
woman besides Dorothy Arzner to have directed a movie in 1930’s Hollywood. And
I’ll finish off night one with a screening of Throne of Blood(1957), Akira Kurosawa’s epic adaptation of Macbeth. I hope enough people will be
distracted by some of the evening’s other high-profile screenings to leave me a
seat in the Chinese multiplex’s smallest house, #4, where both of my Thursday
night intendeds will be unfurling in 35mm.

Friday begins early, 9:00 a.m., again in the #4, with
historian Donald Bogle introducing producer-director Clarence Brown’s adaptation
of William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust (1949), a
groundbreaking instance of the Hollywood depiction of African-American lives on
screen. Then its next door to the slightly bigger #6 (I’ll spend all day
bopping back and forth between these two venues) for Preston Sturges’
magnificently innuendo-laden comedyThe Miracle of Morgan's Creek(1944), starring Eddie Bracken, William
Demarest, and Betty Hutton as the mysteriously impregnated Trudy Kockenlocker.
(I always try to see Sturges with a big audience whenever I can, you see.) A
quick bite to eat, and then back in line for Blessed Event (1932), another
pre-code treat with Lee Tracy and the immortal Ned Sparks as a cynical, rival
gossip columnists, introduced by the unmissable Bruce Goldstein of NYC’s Film
Forum; followed by Andre De Toth’s None Shall Escape(1944), a postwar
drama that anticipated the Nuremburg Trials by a year, introduced by noir czar
Eddie Muller and the film’s 100-year-old star, Marsha Hunt.

Friday’s 7:15 p.m. block makes for the first of two big conflicts for me, which will likely be decided by how easy it will be to get a seat for either of them. I could go for I Take This Woman (1931), a very early star vehicle for one of my favorite actresses, Carole Lombard. Or I might easily be tempted by a chance to see The Creature from the Black Lagoon(1954) in an undoubtedly splendid 3D digital presentation. The Gill Man will be showing off his breaststroke in the bigger of the two auditoriums, so a last-minute assessment of the length of lines leading into the #4 and the #6 will be key as I scurry out of the previous screening.

Next, while Romeo and
Juliet, Gene Tierney, Lee Marvin and bedeviled little Regan Macneil do their
things in other venues, I will be realigning with one of my earliest TCMFF
dictums and following historian/filmmaker Michael Schlesinger wherever he goes,
as he introduces the brilliant Frank Tashlin comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?(1957), a favorite which I’ve never seen
projected. In past festivals Michael has ensured that I’ve been exposed to pure
gold via big-screen greats like Murder,
He Says (1945), a first-ever
big-screen experience with my all-time-favorite Billy Wilder film, One Two Three (1961), Who Done It? (1942), Johnny Guitar (1954), and Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934).
I’ve never regretted attending a screening Michael Schlesinger has introduced.
I have, however, regretted not
attending a few, so I’m not gonna make that mistake again. Finally, by Friday
at midnight I’ll be just delirious enough for Timothy Carey standing, lurching,
bobbing and weaving, and strumming at 20-feet-tall, and a late-night spin with The World's Greatest Sinner (1962), maybe the most perfect selection,
beside Eraserhead and Plan Nine from Outer Space, the festival
has ever presented as a midnight movie discovery.

Then it’ll be off to bed for a couple hours, then back on the train to Hollywood to make Saturday’s first feature, the 9:00 a.m. screening of Robert Aldrich’s great adaptation of Mickey Spillane’s noir classic Kiss Me Deadly (1955)—I’m skipping The Ox-bow Incident and His Girl Friday for this because I’ve never seen Aldrich’s take on Mike Hammer big and wide. Then I’ll soften up after a bout of hard-boiled Hollywood with a digital restoration of Jean-Pierre Melville’s relatively little-seen melodrama When You Read This Letter (1953), followed by recent Oscar-winner James Ivory introducing his 1987 Maurice, which I’ve never seen in any shape or form. (I am leaving myself open to the possibility of instead attending that panel on women in animation, which is scheduled directly against Maurice on Saturday night, but I won’t decide for sure until the last minute.)

To round out Saturday night, it’s back to the hard-boiled, with Sam Fuller’s magnificent spectacle dedicated to the birth of American tabloid journalism, Park Row(1952), which I’ve only ever seen on a tattered VHS tape, followed by Howard Hawks’ original (and far superior to the remake) gangster masterpiece, Scarface(1932).

By Scarface’s conclusion on Saturday night I fully anticipate I will be
bleary-eyed and bone-tired, so I expect to skip the projection of the gorgeous
digital restoration of Night of the
Living Dead screening at midnight. But the rest I will gain by getting home
and to bed “early” will pay off by being bright and sparkly for John Sayles’
introduction of one of my all-time favorites, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968),
screening in the splendor of the big Chinese theater. If TCMFF couldn’t wrangle
an appearance by Claudia Cardinale to commemorate her 80th birthday,
which was April 15, then this will just have to do. Sunday afternoon will be
open to whatever films TCMFF will run for their “TBA” screenings, blocks usually
populated by unexpectedly popular pre-code treats that draw far bigger audiences
than could be accommodated during their initial programming appearances. (A
good candidate for repeat opportunities just might be something like I Take This Woman, the likelihood of
which would certainly influence my decision to see The Creature from the Black Lagoon, even if Dennis Miller is
introducing it.)

But by far the biggest conflict for me in the whole of TCMFF
2018 will be served up during Sunday night’s closing slot. Ever since it was
announced a few months ago that TCMFF would be screening Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera(1925),
accompanied by a live score performed by the Mont Alto Motion Picture
Orchestra, my daughter Emma and I had been looking forward to seeing it together.
What else could top that, right? Well, last month, at the relative last minute,
TCMFF dropped the big one, just like when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor—a 40th-anniversary
screening of National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) at the big Chinese featuring a cast reunion including, Bruce McGill, Tim
Matheson, Martha Smith, James Widdoes, Mark Metcalf, Stephen Bishop and
director John Landis. It’s a matter of weighing the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
effect again, and though I have certainly seen Animal House more than once in my lifetime, Emma has never seen it, and to have her first
time with it be in a packed 1,000-seat house amidst an audience primed by lots
of great stories about the making of the film and the legacy of some of its
stars, like John Belushi, John Vernon and Stephen Furst, who are no longer with
us, well, that may be an opportunity that, at the expense of my classic film
buff street cred, might be just too difficult to resist. (I’ve got some stories of my own, but I doubt I’ll be invited to crash that party!)

So that’s a sneak peek at what’s possibly up for me this
year at TCMFF 2018. As I always do, I will follow up in two weeks with an
overview of what I learned at TCMFF right here in this column, and you can look
for my usual coverage, in the virtual pages of Slant magazine’s blog The
House Next Door, where editor Ed Gonzalez clears some space for me every
year and makes possible my attending this event. (I will link to that coverage
here.) So look for me to check in around May 5, provided I can keep my eyes
open long enough to write about it all. Poor, poor pitiful me. And down go the
lights…

*********************************

For another perspective on what’s coming up at this year’s TCM Film
Festival, check out film archivist Ariel Schudson’s conversation with TCM
programmer Millie De Chirico, who is a consistently delightful presence at the
festival, available as a podcast on Schudson’s blog Archivist's Alley.*********************************